Corb Lund’s campaign to halt new coal mining along Alberta’s Eastern Slopes has cleared its threshold. Organizers delivered more than 205,000 signatures to Elections Alberta on June 10, about 27,000 more than the 177,732 signatures required under the Citizen Initiative Act.
Lund and a group of Water Not Coal supporters arrived at the Elections Alberta office in Edmonton with a horse trailer in tow. Eighteen bins of signature sheets were unloaded, marking what they describe as a defining moment in a six-year fight over coal policy in the province.
While Lund says there is a significant buffer between signatures required and collected, Elections Alberta must verify the signatures before the initiative can proceed further.
“We got over 205,000,” Lund says. “There’ll be a few bad addresses, but we only needed 178,000. That’s a really big buffer. So we’re quite confident.”
Organizers say the four-month signature drive drew support from across the province — from urban centres to rural communities, First Nations and remote areas near the Eastern Slopes.
“It shows that Albertans are very strongly against these coal mines at the headwaters of our rivers,” Lund says. “We got signatures from 84 out of 87 ridings in the province. It was a very wide group of Albertans voicing their opinion.”
For Water Not Coal organizers, the delivery marked both a logistical endpoint and an emotional milestone. Spokesperson Laura Laing, a rancher and longtime advocate for protecting the Eastern Slopes, calls the delivery a surreal and emotional moment.
“It was very heartwarming,” she says. “We kind of wrapped all those months of blood, sweat and tears. It was quite the moment in history, really. One of the biggest moments that I think our province has seen on a grassroots initiative.”
The horse trailer was a deliberate transportation choice. Lund says organizers brought it to make a point about who this fight belongs to.
“It was just to show people that rural people care about this,” he says.
Elections Alberta officials accepted the 18 bins, issued an affidavit of receipt and began verification the next morning. The agency, which operates independently of any political party, has 21 days to count and validate the signatures.
Clearing the threshold does not automatically put a coal question on a referendum ballot.
Under the Citizen Initiative Act, a verified legislative proposal goes to the Speaker of the legislative assembly and the government must refer it to a committee that can recommend either legislation or a provincewide vote.
Alberta already has a referendum with 10 separate questions set for Oct. 19; organizers hope a coal question can join it.
However, Premier Danielle Smith has indicated the coal proposal must first proceed through the process outlined in the Citizen Initiative Act before any decision is made on whether it will appear on a ballot.
Speaking on a radio show, Smith said the petition is a legislative proposal that must be reviewed by a committee, which will consult with government officials and make recommendations on how to proceed.
“I looked at the petition and it calls for a legislative proposal, so I have to figure out what that means,” Smith said. “There is a process that’s outlined in the act, and we will follow that process on this one too.”
What the petition asks
The petition calls on the provincial government to prohibit new coal mining and exploration anywhere along Alberta’s Eastern Slopes, exempting only mines already in active production as of Jan. 1, 2026.
It specifically names two proposed developments — Northback Holdings’ Grassy Mountain project near the headwaters of the Oldman River in the Crowsnest Pass area and Valory Resources’ Blackstone project in Clearwater County, near the headwaters of the North Saskatchewan River.
Lund has said both projects are at similar stages in the regulatory process and represent the most immediate potential coal developments on the Eastern Slopes, but has emphasized the petition is deliberately broader.
“We specifically included Grassy Mountain and Blackstone within the wording of the question, because we wanted to be very clear that it includes those two,” Lund has said.
Six years in the making
The campaign’s roots stretch back to 2020, when Alberta’s move to lift long-standing protections on Rocky Mountain coal mining sparked widespread opposition.
The Grassy Mountain proposal was rejected in 2021 by a joint federal-provincial review panel, when the project was held by Benga Mining.
It re-entered the approval process with a modified approach under Northback Holdings rebranding and, in May 2025, the Alberta Energy Regulator approved deep-drilling exploration permits for the site.
Lund’s personal involvement includes meetings with coal lobbyists and company executives, correspondence with government ministers, participation in protests and presentations at regulatory hearings.
The idea for a citizen initiative took shape following a June 2025 town hall in Fort Macleod where Premier Smith encouraged those concerned about coal mining to consider that route. Lund and Water Not Coal organizers filed a notice of intent and received approval, but not without a significant setback.
Legislative interruption
In December 2025, the campaign was thrown into uncertainty when Elections Alberta informed organizers their previously approved petition had been retroactively cancelled following the implementation of Bill 14, provincial legislation that amended Alberta’s citizen initiative framework.
The bill transferred certain decision-making powers from the chief electoral officer to the justice minister and nullified petitions that had not been formally issued before the legislation took effect.
In a Dec. 12 statement, Lund said the cancellation was a serious blow but that organizers used the interruption to sharpen their operations. A new notice of intent was filed Dec. 19 and Elections Alberta confirmed on Jan. 27 that the revised application met legislative requirements.
The formal petition was issued Feb. 10, with the signature collection window running from Feb. 11 to June 10.
Four months on the road
Over the four-month collection period, Water Not Coal mobilized more than 3,000 registered canvassers across the province, staging thousands of signing events at community centres, markets, breweries, ranches, doorsteps and sidewalks.
In the final stretch, Lund conducted what organizers called a last-chance tour running from Lethbridge to Edmonton.
“There were people lined up to sign and say thanks,” Laing says, adding that even people from Crowsnest Pass and the MD of Ranchland supported the petition.
She says the broader human experience of the campaign left its own lasting impression.
“The friendships made along the way are incredible, and just connections to people we wouldn’t have met before,” Laing says. “I think the human experience of this whole thing has been the biggest adventure experience and return on our efforts for sure.”
Support for the campaign was also visible in the Pincher Creek area, which sits close to the proposed Grassy Mountain project. Lund says he received a “very positive” response during a visit to the community earlier in the campaign, noting it was his first time engaging directly with residents there on the coal issue.
A dispute over water
In the final weeks of the campaign, organizers seized on a Northback move they say validates their concerns — a water licence application Northback Holdings filed with the Alberta Energy Regulator. Organizers argue it contradicts the company’s years of assurances that Grassy Mountain would not need additional water from the already stressed Oldman River system.
“They promised for a number of years that they wouldn’t need any of our water, and they’ve just turned around and made an application for a large amount of water,” Lund says. “To me, that’s basically lying.”
Laing, whose ranch operations in southern Alberta have already been affected by drought and tightening water allocations, was equally pointed.
“They say one thing and do another once they’re in,” she says. “As a rancher in the south, I don’t know where this water is going to come from. On our ranch, we’ve had to divest our herd size to accommodate the lack of water. That water needs to be preserved. It’s our No. 1 resource in the province and we can’t be just giving that away.”
At a May 26 presentation to the MD of Pincher Creek council, Northback CEO Mike Young said the company revised its water approach to remove any direct withdrawal from creeks or streams. Instead, operational needs will be met with precipitation captured on-site and water recovered through mine dewatering, stored in dams during rain and seasonal freshet flows.
Young likened the model to storage systems used in Alberta’s irrigation networks and said a water allocation licence is required because the water would be stored and used.
Next steps and objectives
With the petition now in the hands of Elections Alberta, organizers say the next critical step will be determining wording for a potential referendum question. Lund is emphatic that the exact petition wording approved by Elections Alberta be used verbatim.
“We put a lot of time into the wording of our question with lawyers and a lot of thought,” he says. “We insist that the government use our exact wording, because we made it very specific to include the Blackstone project and the Grassy Mountain project.”
Looking beyond a vote, Lund describes a two-part vision of success — strong legislation banning new coal mining on the Eastern Slopes and a level of public awareness durable enough to outlast any future government.
“You could change legislation — even if they make good legislation, some other government can change it down the road,” he says.
“Our goal, in part, with the petition and referendum, is to get enough public discussion on this issue that most Albertans understand how bad an idea this is. If another politician comes along who’s fine with coal at the headwaters of our rivers, they’ll be run out of office.”
For now, organizers say they plan a brief rest before what they expect will be an intense lead-up to a possible fall vote and acknowledge the opposition won’t be quiet.
“The coal industry has become more and more aggressive in their attacks on us,” Lund says. “But they say if you’re getting flak, you’re over the target. They’re feeling the public pressure, definitely.”
